Physics Commons^™

Imaging Cf3I Conical Intersection And Photodissociation Dynamics With Ultrafast Electron Diffraction, Jie Yang, Xiaolei Zhu, Thomas J.A. Wolf, Zheng Li, J. Pedro F. Nunes, Ryan Coffee, James P. Cryan, Markus Gühr, Kareem Hegazy, Tony F. Heinz, Keith Jobe, Renkai Li, Xiaozhe Shen, Theodore Veccione, Stephen Weathersby, Kyle J. Wilkin, Charles Yoneda, Qiang Zheng, Todd J. Martinez, Martin Centurion, Xijie Wang

Martin Centurion Publications

Conical intersections play a critical role in excited-state dynamics of polyatomic molecules because they govern the reaction pathways of many nonadiabatic processes. However, ultrafast probes have lacked sufficient spatial resolution to image wave-packet trajectories through these intersections directly. Here, we present the simultaneous experimental characterization of one-photon and two-photon excitation channels in isolated CF₃I molecules using ultrafast gas-phase electron diffraction. In the two-photon channel, we have mapped out the real-space trajectories of a coherent nuclear wave packet, which bifurcates onto two potential energy surfaces when passing through a conical intersection. In the one-photon channel, we have resolved excitation …